He also became silent.  The previous winter he had published his first book:  a series of little sketches, brought from Plassans, among which only a few rougher notes indicated that the author was a mutineer, a passionate lover of truth and power.  And lately he had been feeling his way, questioning himself while all sorts of confused ideas throbbed in his brain.  At first, smitten with the thought of undertaking something herculean, he had planned a genesis of the universe, in three phases or parts; the creation narrated according to science; mankind supervening at the appointed hour and playing its part in the chain of beings and events; then the future—­beings constantly following one another, and finishing the creation of the world by the endless labour of life.  But he had calmed down in presence of the venturesome hypotheses of this third phase; and he was now looking out for a more restricted, more human framework, in which, however, his vast ambition might find room.

‘Ah, to be able to see and paint everything,’ exclaimed Claude, after a long interval.  ’To have miles upon miles of walls to cover, to decorate the railway stations, the markets, the municipal offices, everything that will be built, when architects are no longer idiots.  Only strong heads and strong muscles will be wanted, for there will be no lack of subjects.  Life such as it runs about the streets, the life of the rich and the poor, in the market places, on the race-courses, on the boulevards, in the populous alleys; and every trade being plied, and every passion portrayed in full daylight, and the peasants, too, and the beasts of the fields and the landscapes—­ah! you’ll see it all, unless I am a downright brute.  My very hands are itching to do it.  Yes! the whole of modern life!  Frescoes as high as the Pantheon!  A series of canvases big enough to burst the Louvre!’

Whenever they were thrown together the painter and the author generally reached this state of excitement.  They spurred each other mutually, they went mad with dreams of glory; and there was such a burst of youth, such a passion for work about their plans, that they themselves often smiled afterwards at those great, proud dreams which seemed to endow them with suppleness, strength, and spirit.

Claude, who had stepped back as far as the wall, remained leaning against it, and gazing at his work.  Seeing which, Sandoz, overcome by fatigue, left the couch and joined him.  Then both looked at the picture without saying a word.  The gentleman in the velveteen jacket was entirely roughed in.  His hand, more advanced than the rest, furnished a pretty fresh patch of flesh colour amid the grass, and the dark coat stood out so vigorously that the little silhouettes in the background, the two little women wrestling in the sunlight, seemed to have retreated further into the luminous quivering of the glade.  The principal figure, the recumbent woman, as yet scarcely more than outlined, floated about like some aerial creature seen in dreams, some eagerly desired Eve springing from the earth, with her features vaguely smiling and her eyelids closed.